Technology sets up the playground, interaction design plays in it

When multi-touch screen was out, everybody has a touch screen solution.
When iPhone is hot, everybody is designing iPhone apps.

What's the real power behind all ?

It's the creation of multi-touch, it's the creation of iPhone. It's the creation of wii. It's the first use of AJAX by Google map. It's the creation of Facebook.

Most of them are innovative ways making use of existing technologies. Most of the people who've created them, are not so-called interaction designers. They are engineers and business men. Most of the interaction designers are just designing in the playground they've set up.

It's like Starcraft. Blizzard sets up the game, we've been playing in it for years.

There are also two types of interaction designers: one type enters into the playground early on, and discovers new ways of gaming in the playground; The other type enters into the playground later, games with the rules the early designer has discovered. However, some excellent designers get in late, but they can still discover smart and new ways of playing games. They could also be categorized into the first group.

It's still like playing starcraft. Best players create strategies/tricks by themselves. Other players follow.

To summerize it a little bit, we can say there are three types of designers in this whole technology world:

- the ones who create playground, like creators of multi-touch, iPhone, wii, AJAX, Facebook
- the ones who discover the uses of the playground for gaming, like new ways of interactions on iPhone, Wii, different use of Ajax, new types of social networks
- the ones who learn and follow, designing for a specific purpose, like web applications, iPhone apps, facebook apps.

Actually sometimes I was really confused with what people are doing in our program. The things everybody is doing look so different. That kind of disorder makes me bothered. After I listed out these three levels of design and the relationship between technology and design, I sort of understand my colleagues better.


From that point of view, interaction designer is not like traditional designer. Traditional designer doesn't have such a field that is progressing so fast and he's not facing with new materials every now and then. You could become an excellent industrial designer, architecture designer, interior designer by practicing, but that may not apply to interaction designer. Interaction designers have to keep their paces with the fast-pacing technology and know the technology well.